Been doing some animating for Xystus' snpc pack, and suddenly I got the idea of doing snpc's from the "Tremors" movies! No models exist for them, but I've been practicing game modeling lately, and figured this would be a good project for me.

I'm starting with the arguably simplest of the three beasts, the "Graboid". Simple cylindrical shape overall, but wanted to make sure his body had a fleshy sag to it. Graboids are covered in spikes that they use for movement underground. I think I can add those on later by chamfering vertices and pulling the middle vert out.

Trying to be as low poly as possible. I'd rather have to add detail than take away from it. Almost finished with the upper beak and will move onto the three lower mandibles soon.

Damn, that is an amazing idea. I'll scream like a girl if you get this done. Make a Kevin Bacon NPC as well, that just runs around, dodging it while playing random voice clips from the movie XP I loved Tremors 1, 2nd was alright. Haven't really seen the rest though..

Definitely still WIP, but here's what I've managed so far. His left and right jaw parts are a bit too long right now, but the shape is essentially correct, pending further inspection and tweaking. Be advised, I would be delighted to hear whatever criticism you might have.

Worked a bit on his mandibles, and turned out by more referencing that on closing them, the outer two are slightly longer than the rest of the whole beak, so they're not shorter as I'd thought they were.

Also altered his physique a little, and added his movement spikes.

On top of that, gave him a true throat and "stomach". Also took care in modeling his three tentacles. Will be a job to rig them right, but it should work well when it is :)

Yeah, UVW would be tricky, except that the spikes are separate elements from the main body and only consist of three polys each, so it should be fairly simple to stack all the spike unwraps in around the same spot on the texture map and get a decent result out of it.

Likewise, the tongue UV's can be put in the exact same spot too, to save work.

Thanks about the tongues, by the way :) I took great care in modeling them. I won't make their jaws work though, that would be a little overkill. Hopefully they're low enough poly to not dramatically affect the mesh, while still being visually accurate approximately.

I've currently got them lined up so they can be rigged as easily as possible, since while I can't avoid having to do individual vertex assignment due to the proximity a lot of these bones will have, I DON'T want the tongue meshes to intersect with the rest of the body, because THAT would be a BITCH to work out.

Once they're rigged, I'll be able to curl them inside the body until they're used. I'll probably IK, the ends of the tongues, though that'll mean I have to set limits on the bones so they don't go making acute angles on me.

If somebody can make a map to match this, that would be amazing :P Having to stay on top of things and whatnot. And then then, have the bulldozer! And and, the girl on the Pogo Stick! AND...AND... XO I forgot how awesome that movie was XP

Well, after a lot of work, I managed to create UVW coordinates for our Graboid. I tell you, pelt mapping is a lifesaver, as long as you seam everything correctly.

After I get back from seeing a movie here in a bit, I'll try my own hand at texturing, but in case anyone else wants to take a stab at it, or knows someone good who might help us out, I'll leave the UVW's here, all nice and labeled for user friendliness :)

And yes, I was able to overlap the spike and tentacles UV's so that we wouldn't have to worry about Re-texturing the same things a hundred times.